Graywolf Press author Percival Everett won PEN America’s Jean Stein Book Award on Thursday.

The $75,000 award was given to Everett for his novel “Dr. No,” which follows a mathematics professor who is an expert on the subject of “nothing” as he is pulled into a villainous plan to break into Fort Knox.

Everett said during his acceptance speech that he has been with Minneapolis’ Graywolf Press for 29 years, and he thanked his longtime editor Fiona McCrae and his agent of 30 years, Melanie Jackson.

— Maraya King

Court reappoints pro-Trump lawyer

An attorney for former President Donald Trump who worked to overturn his loss in battleground Wisconsin has been reappointed by the state Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to a second term on a committee that advises judges on judicial conduct.

Jim Troupis’ reappointment to the panel was approved Thursday on a 4-3 vote by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with all three liberal justices dissenting, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

Troupis’ first term on the Judicial Conduct Advisory Committee was slated to expire Tuesday. With the court’s reappointment, he will remain on the committee through March 7, 2026. Members of the nine-member advisory committee are limited to two successive three-year terms.

His reappointment comes about a month before an April 4 election that will determine majority control of the court for at least the next two years. One of the four conservative justices who voted to reappoint Troupis is retiring.

Troupis is a former Dane County Circuit Court judge who represented Trump in 2020 when he tried to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in Wisconsin. Troupis also advised Republicans on their plan to have fake electors cast their ballots for Trump in Wisconsin, even though he had lost.

— Associated Press

Substance center owes $2M in fraud case

A federal judge has ruled that a now-shuttered Wisconsin substance abuse center and its CEO owe the state and federal government more than $2 million in a Medicaid fraud case.

Online court records show U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller ruled Tuesday that Brookfield-based The Healing Center LLC and its CEO and lone practitioner, Dr. Siamak Arassi, are liable for $2.3 million.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the center and Arassi in 2019. The lawsuit alleged Arassi ordered prescriptions for Vivitrol, an anti-addiction drug, in the names of former patients and billed Medicaid for reimbursements, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday. He stockpiled the medicine and sold it to patients for more than $1,000 a month, the newspaper reported.

— Associated Press

Grothman breaks promise on term limit

Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman said Friday he will run for a sixth term next year representing east-central Wisconsin, despite promising when he first ran not to serve more than a decade in Congress.

Grothman, 67, said in a telephone interview that he is campaigning and raising money for a sixth term.

“That’s the plan right now,” Grothman said when asked if he was running again. “It’s not something we’ve thought a lot about. ... I’ve talked to a lot of people over the past few months. Nobody has told me I shouldn’t run again.”

He made the pledge not to serve more than five terms during the Republican primary in 2014. Grothman said he doesn’t know what the maximum number of terms he would serve now is.

— Associated Press